A conventional handwritten input information processing apparatus realizing a realistic sense of writing data on a paper with a pen is disclosed, for example, in British Patent Laid-open Publication No. GB2193827A, Germany Patent Laid-open Publication Number DE3511353Al, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication JP-A-63-184130, and SIG CHI, Volume 18, Number 2, (1989), pp. 73 to 74.
A conventional apparatus of the type that formatted data is entered in a touch screen manner is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication JP-A-63-158623 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,356).
The above-described conventional techniques include the feature that data can be entered on a screen directly or in a touch screen manner.
A further conventional apparatus in which an operation description is designated at a particular area (icon, menu) on a CRT screen and the operation description is executed upon a click (switch-on or off) of a mouse, is disclosed in the Complete Hyper Card Handbook, Bantom Books Inc., Goodman. D(1987).
A user interface of a recent workstation, may include a tool kit of X windows as disclosed, for example, Nikkei Computer, April 24 Issue, 1989, pp. 81 to 92. This interface is featured in an.object-oriented environment.
The above-described conventional techniques do not consider the handwriting environment of allowing a realistic sense of writing data on a paper with a pen and also executing data writing while understanding an intent of a user. They therefore have a shortcoming in that they are incapable; of becoming adapted to human thinking processes. This problem will be further detailed with reference to FIGS. 2 to 4.
Consider now that a formatted mail document shown in FIG. 2 is processed with a computer. The formatted mail document G100 shown in FIG. 2 is divided into areas G110 to G210. It is necessary for a computer to understand the contents entered in the receiver input area G130, transmitter input area G150, item input area G170, and contents input area G190, hence it is necessary to recognize a handwritten character stroke. An input to the receiver input area G130 is used as the information to identify a receiver to which this document is mailed. It is not necessary for the computer to process the information entered in the comment input area G210. It is sufficient if the content of the comments written by the receiver of the document is sent back to the transmitter. Therefore, a handwritten input stroke is not transformed into character information but it is used directly as a handwritten image comment.
If a formatted mail document is to be formed by a computer using a conventional method, it is necessary as shown in FIG. 3 to enter a handwritting after designating the areas G220 and G230. For example, it is assumed that data is first handwritten in the transmitter area G150 and the comment area G210, and then this mail document is transferred. In this case, a user operates in the following manner.
(1) designate "character" at the menu area G220 with a pen 2, PA1 (2) input a handwritten character in the transmitter input area G150 with the pen 2, PA1 (3) designate "image" at the menu area G220 with the pen 2, PA1 (4) input a handwritten comment in the comment input area G210 with the pen 2, and PA1 (5) check the contents of the screen, and if OK, designates "transfer" at the menu area G230.
As above, a user must consider the menu operations (1), (3), and (5) this thereby posing a problem of adapting to the human thinking processes.
A conventional touch screen type format input apparatus has a hierarchic menu structure. Therefore, it has on one hand an advantage that data can be inputted by sequentially designating menus. However, on the other hand, it presents a problem in that a form is limited to a particular type and data is required to be selected from menus so that it is difficult to deal with a variety of forms.
With an X windows tool kit or a HyperCard, as shown in FIG. 4, data is input through an interactive manner with a CRT screen upon a click of a mouse used as a pointing input device. It is not possible to operate by contacting a pen directly with the screen, or to enter a character or graphics through handwriting. Thus, there is an inability of interacting with the processing apparatus with a realistic sense of writing data on a paper with a pen.
There is another problem associated with the above-described conventional techniques. Namely, a conventional information processing apparatus has a size of a desk top or lap top apparatus so that it is not portable like a note book and cannot be used in all types of environments.